David Rubenstein, founder of one of the most powerful private equity firms in the world, The Carlyle group, has a message for all the young people on Wall Street concerned about burning out on long hours.
It's about love (via CNBC's Carl Quintanilla):
"If you love what you do, it's not 'work'" - Carlyle's David Rubenstein, on banking interns' workload. @CNBC @SquawkCNBC
- Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) January 14, 2014
That tweet sparked a pretty interesting Twitter conversation, with one respondent telling the story of how he was once called in at 10:00 pm on Christmas Eve to prepare a model for a deal.
Bank after bank has announced cuts its investment banking junior staff's hours. Not just the interns, but also the junior analysts that come in year after year, work for long hours through a haze of caffeine and paper cuts, and hope that seniority will shave off some of the hours that have made their lives hell.
Interns especially aren't doing high level work either. They're putting together pitch books and making sure that everything is in order for their bosses when they have to meet with clients. That's part of the reason that they have to work when senior bankers get to go home.
Good to know that, Rubenstein, one of the guy's at the top can understand and sympathize with their predicament.
One veteran trader (not investment banker, there's a difference) told Business Insider that, as a junior, he remembers his friends in investment banking coming home at 5 am, sleeping for a few hours, and then taking a car back to work. He thought they were nuts.
"My perception of i-bankers has always been that they want to make a lot of money without a lot of risk," he said. "But they all fail to realize that wasting time is the biggest risk of all."
That's some Wall Street real talk right there.